Next Stop: Thailand

Black Bayou Brass departs tomorrow for our recital and residency at Mahidol University in Thailand. We are extremely excited about this trip, and are looking forward to representing our university on the other side of the world (map of Thailand linked from travel.state.gov/). Though some parts of our schedule there are still being worked out, we will be performing several times, as well as holding master classes. Here’s an overview of our trip.

I am sure there will be plenty of other activities to add to this schedule, including sight-seeing, additional performances, and some amazing cuisine. If you are interested in more details about our trip, I’ll be posting frequent updates (with pictures) to this blog, and possibly Facebook as well.

Though I hardly qualify as a world traveler, I have been on long flights before, though not in a long time. Colleagues with more travel experience have provided some useful tips for dealing with jet-lag, including frequent walks up and down the aircraft’s cabin, switching to the destination country’s time zone during the flight (12 hour difference between here and Thailand), and drinking plenty of water. If you have any last minute tips for coping with long flights, please share them! We planned our trip so that we’ll have a few days to recuperate and rehearse once we arrive in Thailand, but obviously we want to get there in the best shape possible. My packing list is extensive, but here are a few items that other brass players might be interested in. Traveling with me as a carry on:

Horn

Practice Mute (Anyone out there been able to practice successfully during a long flight?)

That, plus the other basic necessities (toothbrush, pillow, etc.) will be enough hopefully to make it through the first leg of the journey, a 14 hour flight from Houston to Doha, Qatar. After a brief layover there it’s on to Bangkok (a 7 hour flight) and Mahidol. A huge thank you is in order for Daren Robbins, horn professor at Mahidol, for working out numerous logistics on his end. Daren has done an incredible job organizing everything in preparation for our visit, including a great publicity poster (see below), and a link on the Mahidol website.